Just the other day, I received a voicemail that raised my suspicions immediately. It claimed to be from the “National Tax Relief Program,” offering to help clear back taxes. Intrigued and a bit wary, I decided to dig deeper into this, and what I found was a classic scam playing out. Here’s a rundown of the call and why you should be on high alert if you receive a similar one.

Today, we’re drawing your attention to a sinister new scam flourishing on social marketplaces like Facebook’s Marketplace. This time, digital wallets are under threat, with the likes of Venmo, PayPal, and other cash transfer apps falling victim to these deceptive practices.

Ahoy, digital sailors! Today, we’re embarking on a thrilling voyage to navigate the treacherous waters of the internet. Our mission? To help you, our dear readers, spot and avoid the latest phishing scams that are swimming around in your email inbox, just waiting to take a bite out of your…

A huge batch of scam text messages with links going to onlinehome.us have been going out, phishing for your Amazon, Netflix, Venmo, and other credentials. Many of them appear to include the strings “membershpspprt” or “mailspprtaccnt” in the ‘from’ field, suggesting that they are all part of a bot effort using the same script or scripts.

Highly targeted scam calls aren’t always obviously a scam. I don’t know about you, but I associate scam calls with thick accents, broken English, and other obvious identifiers, which aren’t always present.

A new American Express credit card identity theft phishing scam is being sent out in spam email. The subject line is “A recent charge attempt requires your attention” with a random number, so that the subject of our sample reads “A recent charge attempt requires your attention 688836786” The spam goes on to ask “did you recently use your card?”

Below is the newest eBay phishing email example, sent out and received on June 21, 2022. Don’t fall for these sorts of eBay scams! If you receive an email from eBay (or anywhere) about an order that you know you didn’t place, delete it! Now of course, the scammers know that you know that you didn’t place the order; what they are counting on is you panicking and thinking that someone else has placed an order in your name, using your credit card information. And they are counting on you clicking the link to “the order” so you can tell eBay that there must be some mistake. Of course, it’s not really eBay to which that link leads: you’ve fallen right into their trap.

Millions of people are receiving the Costco survey reward email scam, with Costco survey rewards of “up to $100” promised. Others get email promising a “Costco survey free gift”. They are all scams, don’t fall for them!

Typically when someone receives an unexpected call or text message that appears to be from their bank, and being savvy and wary of fraud and scams, one of the first things that they will do is Google the phone number that shows in the Caller ID to confirm that it really is someone from their bank who is calling or texting them. And that is why scammers who are committing bank fraud and phishing have become adept at spoofing their own Caller ID to make it appear to actually be coming from their target’s bank.

A new Paypal invoice scam uses Paypal’s own invoicing system, so that the email actually really comes from Paypal, and has real Paypal links. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t really go back to Paypal is the phone number (855-607-2935 in our example below), which is manned by the scammers pretending to be, and answering the phone as, Paypal. Here’s how it works.

Every year, millions of reports of fraud are filed, while even more cases of fraud go unreported due to a multitude of factors. There’s no way to be sure how much money is lost yearly to fraud, scams, and spam, either. However, for perspective, American consumers lost about $56 Billion to identity fraud in 2020. Nobody is immune to a conman, and oftentimes, by the time you start to have second thoughts, you’ve already wired the money somewhere. Here are three huge indicators that you may be dealing with something you need to reconsider, before you pay a price.

There is a fresh phishing email scam targeting Reddit users. The Reddit phishing emails exactly mimic the “you have a new follower” Reddit email, but when you click on the “View Follower” button, well, you do get an eyeful, but not the view you were expecting. Generally the purported followers are national brands (we’ve seen samples saying that the new follower is Kroger, and PrudentialFinancial, among others).

The Amazon billing and fraud prevention scam is back in full force, along with the Apple advisor “your iCloud account has been breached” scam. Each of these scams rely on pre-recorded calls to your phone, and then enticing you to call the “Amazon billing and fraud prevention” department, or an “Apple support advisor,” respectively.

If you receive what appears to be an Amazon gift card in the mail (in your actual mailbox), exhorting you to “scratch and match” and call a number like 855-544-9400 or 855-270-6163 or another 855 number, DON’T DO IT! This scam from “PTL” is a ploy to get your personal details and then get you into a local business where you can be pressured to part with your money.

As the news and spread of Coronavirus increase so do email scams and phishing attacks, preying on people’s thirst for information. Don’t fall for them!